"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

ight, because of dis, and dis, and dis," and he turns to Einstein and says, "Don't you
agree, Professor Einstein?"
Einstein says, "Nooooooooooooo," a nice, German­sounding "No," ­­ very polite.
"I find only that it would be very difficult to make a corresponding theory for
gravitational interaction." He meant for the general theory of relativity, which was his
baby. He continued: "Since we have at this time not a great deal of experimental
evidence, I am not absolutely sure of the correct gravitational theory." Einstein
appreciated that things might be different from what his theory stated; he was very
tolerant of other ideas.
I wish I had remembered what Pauli said, because I discovered years later that the
theory was not satisfactory when it came to making the quantum theory. It's possible that
that great man noticed the difficulty immediately and explained it to me in the question,
but I was so relieved at not having to answer the questions that I didn't really listen to
them carefully. I do remember walking up the steps of Palmer Library with Pauli, who
said to me, "What is Wheeler going to say about the quantum theory when he gives his
talk?"
I said, "I don't know. He hasn't told me. He's working it out himself."
"Oh?" he said. "The man works and doesn't tell his assistant what he's doing on
the quantum theory?" He came closer to me and said in a low, secretive voice, "Wheeler
will never give that seminar."
And it's true. Wheeler didn't give the seminar. He thought it would be easy to
work out the quantum part; he thought he had it, almost. But he didn't. And by the time
the seminar came around, he realized he didn't know how to do it, and therefore didn't
have anything to say.
I never solved it, either ­­ a quantum theory of half­advanced, half­retarded
potentials ­­ and I worked on it for years.
Mixing Paints
The reason why I say I'm "uncultured" or "anti­intellectual" probably goes all the
way back to the time when I was in high school. I was always worried about being a
sissy; I didn't want to be too delicate. To me, no real man ever paid any attention to
poetry and such things. How poetry ever got written ­­ that never struck me! So I
developed a negative attitude toward the guy who studies French literature, or studies too
much music or poetry ­­ all those "fancy" things. I admired better the steel­worker, the
welder, or the machine shop man. I always thought the guy who worked in the machine
shop and could make things, now he was a real guy! That was my attitude. To be a
practical man was, to me, always somehow a positive virtue, and to be "cultured" or
"intellectual" was not. The first was right, of course, but the second was crazy.
I still had this feeling when I was doing my graduate study at Princeton, as you'll
see. I used to eat often in a nice little restaurant called Papa's Place. One day, while I was
eating there, a painter in his painting clothes came down from an upstairs room he'd been
painting, and sat near me. Somehow we struck up a conversation and he started talking
about how you've got to learn a lot to be in the painting business. "For example," he said,
"in this restaurant, what colors would you use to paint the walls, if you had the job to